For $99, everyone who backed Ouya's Kickstarter has unwittingly signed up to beta-test a game console. Alpha-test, even: this is a product with some good ideas and a potentially promising future, but it's a million miles away from something worth spending your money on. Even if the concept is right, the Ouya misses the mark. The controller needs work, the interface is a mess, and have I mentioned there's really nothing to do with the thing? I'm not even sure the concept is right, either: there are plenty of fun Android games, but currently few that work well with a controller and even fewer that look good on your television.

Endadget has a review of their own, and while there is no numeric score it sounds like they aren't very impressed.

Quote:

And then there is, of course, the game selection. There are quite a few titles here worth playing, but virtually all of them have been seen elsewhere in one form or another, which makes the initial offering a bit hard to get excited about. Additionally, the vast majority are what we'd broadly call "mobile" games: simple experiences and simple graphics that are fine for casual play, but lack the kind of immersion you might want when you get settled in at home on your couch.

While the idea behind it is cool and all, I just never saw the value of this. With consoles, I'm going to get a solid great gaming experience that something like the Ouya could never deliver. Even cheap mobile games I find very boring.

So the first big Kickstarter project to come out, and it's fizzling so far.

Um. . . an Android console is a bad idea that most people on here looked at and said "wtf are they thinking" (in more words). I think there will be other bad projects that get funded and Kickstarter will survive them.

A millionaire mother who wants other people to give her $829 to send her daughter to a game development camp...and even after Reddit and 4Chan dug up dirt proving that she's a liar, scammer, manipulator and fraud (as is her husband), people have given her $23,000.

Her campaign violates Kickstarter's rules but the site refuses to take it down, showing dishonest assholes that they can easily use Kickstarter to swindle well-meaning people. Look for more and more scams to pop up on the site in the future.

A millionaire mother who wants other people to give her $829 to send her daughter to a game development camp...and even after Reddit and 4Chan dug up dirt proving that she's a liar, scammer, manipulator and fraud (as is her husband), people have given her $23,000.

Give me $23,000 and I'll write you a kick-ass zombie novel and throw in the signed & numbered hardcovers.

__________________I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

Okay, let me play devil's advocate on this. First off there hasn't been any software specifically made for this system. All that is out there are the apps on the Android store, so I would expect games tailored for this system would be a considerable boost.

That said the lag on the controller is horrible, how is that still possible when near lag-less controllers were perfected with the Wavebird controller? Also as a developer I would be more concerned about how easy it is to pirate my app or game and what will Ouya do?

Nice to see Evil standing up to you guys, heh. This thing just shipped -- I'm not going to decide on this box for at least a year (as to whether it's wonderful or not). The OUYA people have provided the platform. If people don't put amazing software on it, I really can't fault them (the OUYA people).

Nice to see Evil standing up to you guys, heh. This thing just shipped -- I'm not going to decide on this box for at least a year (as to whether it's wonderful or not). The OUYA people have provided the platform. If people don't put amazing software on it, I really can't fault them (the OUYA people).

Yes, you can. The public funded them from going to the producer of a small, niche product for hobbyists into an actual manufacturer. Perhaps they should have used some of those stretches to hire a business man to secure some goddamn software for the user base guaranteed by their pre-purchased units.